According to a recent demographic study by Cornell University, New York’s public school enrollment continues to decline, while homeschool and charter school enrollment rates are on the rise.
The study shows nearly 90% of the state’s school districts showed enrollment declines from the 2013-14 school year to 2023-24. Researcher Leslie Reynolds said a big driver of this trend is an aging population, along with people having fewer children at older ages.
"We're seeing fewer births in general, and women are having births at older ages, so you can have fewer," Reynolds said. "So that just limits the number of children that can be in a district at one time. And then to make up those numbers, you have to have migration. So people either have to come in internationally or domestically, moving in. And so each district experiences that in different ways. So it's not really a surprise to us."
At the same time, more kids are being homeschooled and are going to charter schools.
"Charter schools went from 3% of total K-12 enrollment in New York state to 6.5%," Reynolds said. "And then homeschool went from 0.7% to 1.8% in the next decade."
Reynolds said districts shouldn’t be alarmed at those numbers. But she calls them significant and hopes they prompt local school districts to examine their own trends.
"We kind of look at this as a flag to explore data-driven policy and decision making, but maybe more of a flag than an alarm bell," she said. "But it's also happening across the nation, too, and not just in New York state."
Much of the decline has been in New York City schools. Reynolds notes that among districts with increasing enrollment, many are on Long Island.
